


Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree

by Alifredson



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:18:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4308363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alifredson/pseuds/Alifredson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-AOS season 2 finale/ Post-Agent Carter season 1 finale- A strange visitor changes everything for Peggy Carter. 68 years in the future, interesting relics of the past resurface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monday, May 12, 1947

#  _Monday, May 12, 1947_

Peggy Carter steeled herself for another week working amongst and being degraded by the men of the SSR as she climbed the staircase to the correct floor. She was forty-five minutes early; nightmarish memories of Steve’s crash had plagued her in the middle of the night and no amount of tea could calm her. She had cleaned the apartment she now shared with Angie, courtesy of Howard Stark, and then tried to distract herself with a novel and the radio, neither of which had helped. She had sat, dressed and coiffed, for over an hour before she decided that if she walked to one of the further train stops, she would arrive at work at a respectable hour.

She was glad to see she was the first of her coworkers to arrive. Most of the men generally ignored her. However, a few of the newer ones treated her like a secretary, as the others had before Chief Dooley’s demise. Sousa, the only one who had been at least cordial before, had taken to either ignoring her or glancing at her with doe eyes. He was still angry at Peggy for keeping him in the dark and she was annoyed that Sousa had ultimately believed her (and her sex) as weak as the other pig-headed chauvinists.  She would not be apologizing first.

Chief Thompson’s light was on and his door open, so he was there as well, but he had gotten used to Peggy’s more-than-occasional early starts. He would not bother her. Many things had stayed the same in the two and a half months since Thompson had become chief, but he had certainly changed in the way he treated Peggy. He had given her a few field assignments in the month after his promotion, but the men had been bullheaded and often refused to take her seriously as a partner. Finally she had enough and complained to Thompson who then began to send her on solo, primarily undercover, missions. She liked them. That the men would get mad when she inevitably got the more interesting cases, she liked even more.

Barring any Act of God today would be a boring day, full of paperwork. She had arrived back from a two week long mission in Bulgaria on Thursday after having retrieved an object of unknown origin. It was large, constantly changed from solid to liquid and back again, and had been a bugger to get back home to New York, even with the help of the Howlers. Writing up the report for the object, the summary of the mission, the reports for the three captives they had taken, the report for the one guard that Dugan had shot, and going to oversee the scientists’ work on the object would easily take the new two to three days.

Lunch at the automat was a welcome reprieve. The fans in the automat blew away the mid-spring heat; it was nearly 75 degrees, whereas the SSR had yet to set the fans up. The rising temperatures had snuck up on Peggy. Angie, who was now working as a dresser and as an understudy for a small part in  _Annie Get Your Gun,_  joined her and immediately started berating Peggy for not getting enough sleep when she saw the dark circles under her eyes.

“You need to take some time off, English. Relax a while,” Angie insisted.

Peggy waved her off. “I sleep better when I’m busy; it exhausts me. The problem is when I don’t have enough to do.” Angie leveled her with a probing glare which Peggy tried her best to ignore.

“I know you miss him.” Angie said, laying her hand over Peggy’s. “But you have to move on. If he cared for you as much as it seems he did, he wouldn’t want you to be unhappy. You and Howard both. Look, there’s this stage manager on the show I think you would like. Dark hair, green eyes, very attractive. He’s just your type. Let me set something up. You could go dancing and…”

“No, Angie. Thank you, I have so much to do right now and I don’t like the idea of starting a relationship by lying about what I do.”

Angie sighed, having had this conversation several times over the past few months. “Well, you don’t seem inclined to give your job up and all I ever hear about is how all the guys you work with are morons. Are you planning on staying single forever? What happened to wanting to have a family?”

Peggy pinched the bridge of her nose, thinking that the overly humid bullpen at work was now preferable to the grilling she was receiving, no matter how nice the well-circulated air felt on her face. “I don’t know Angie. I have certain priorities, and right now that isn’t one of them.”

“You aren’t going to get younger.”

“We’re still recovering from the war. I’m where I need to be, anything else I can sort later. Excuse me, my hour is nearly up.” Peggy put her half of the bill on the table and walked back to work.

In the hour she had been out, all hell had broken lose and Peggy walked into an office of frazzled yelling. The snippets she had caught had given her very little information. “Said some artifact just spat it out!” “Not possible, someone got in and security are just trying to save their own tails.” “Probably Hydra.”

A whistle cut through the chatter and everyone shut up as the Chief stepped out of his office. “Enough. Everything is well in hand. Get back to work. Carter, with me. Got a job for you.” Thompson called.

“Ahh, Chief, wouldn’t it make sense to have one of us handle it instead of Carter. I mean, anyone with a little muscle could break her in two,” Kyle Fisher, one of the new agents protested. A mixture of low agreeing murmurs followed from many of the other men.

“On the contrary, Agent Fisher, Agent Carter could take out you and half of your friends before the others had a chance to get to her. And congratulations, you’ve earned yourself a spot tailing the Austin brothers for the next month.” Fisher groaned and Thompson spun around and headed off down the hallway. Peggy followed quickly, pulling up next to him as he hit the call button for the elevator.

“Thank you Chief.” He didn’t acknowledge her and she rolled her eyes. “So what is it that happened? I haven’t been able to get the story since I got back from lunch.”

“That rock you brought back,” he started as they got in the elevator, “spat out a person, a girl. She’s been hysterical, screaming for a ‘Fitz’ and we can’t get a thing out of her. No idea how she got inside that thing, whose side she’s on, what she wants, where’s she’s from, although, English accent, so…”

“So, I’m babysitting,” Peggy replied with disgust, “because she’s female and English.”

“No. You are going to calm her down because you’re female and she’ll relate to you better. Your accent will make her feel more at home. Then, you are going to find out what the hell is going on and report back to me with recommendations.”

_Glorified babysitting_. Peggy thought, but kept her mouth shut. Perhaps she should take Howard up on joining that new organization he was creating. She was going to call him tonight.

Peggy observed the girl through the one-way glass. She had pressed herself into a corner of the room, crouched down in tight black trousers and black sweater over a white blouse. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs, although whimpers of “Fitz” or “Leo” were common and “Coulson,” “Skye,” and “May” were occasional. Three guards,  _armed_  guards, stood opposite her, tall and bulky, blocking the door.

“A bit much,” Peggy said, motioning to the guards. “I want them out when I go in.”

“Carter, they’re there for protection. We don’t know…”

“Thompson, honestly. She’s already been searched, no weapons. All they’ll do is intimidate her and I won’t be able to gain her trust.”

Thompson sighed. “Fine, but they’re standing outside and if she tries to make a run for it…”

“Fair enough.” Peggy walked out of the room to the next door over and gave two sharp knocks before she eased it open. The guards had parted to allow her entrance, but their prisoner had not looked up, and instead seemed to be holding her breath. “Chief Thompson has need of your assistance elsewhere,” she informed the shortest of the three, McArdle, who she knew was the leader.

He gave a nod in return. “Ciskowski, you’re with me. Waters…”

“Will join you as well.” Cameron pursed his lips, but didn’t argue and led his men out of the room. The door shut with a  _click_  behind them.

Peggy moved to the center of the room where a table and chairs sat and took a seat in one. “Now, we’ll not get anywhere if you sit there whingeing all day. Get up. Come and sit down. You’ll not be hurt here.” The girl’s shoulders eased a bit, but she didn’t move. “Come on, I haven’t all day.” Peggy said impatiently.

The girl got up, shuffled to the chair across from Peggy without looking up, and sat down gingerly. “I’m sorry.” She said, her English accent pronounced. “I just don’t know how I got here or  _where here is_. And I’m supposed to meet Fitz…  _Leo_  for dinner and with how everything has been so strange the last year I just wanted everything to go perfectly, but he’s going to go looking for me and  _I won’t be there_.” She broke into sobs again. Peggy looked to the ceiling, willing Steve’s spirit to give her his patience and empathy.

It didn’t work.  _What would Steve do?_  “Who is Leo?” Peggy asked, hoping if the girl just talked she could get something useful.

“Leo Fitz. He’s my partner. He’s engineering, I’m biochem. We work together. And he’s my best friend, but something happened last year and he was sick. I had to go away for work and he’s been so angry at me for leaving. We just started to mend what was broken… and that  _thing_  dragged me away.” The last bit was said with vehemence. “Where am I?”

The girl finally looked up. Her expression changed from despair to utter shock to some mix of bubbling enthusiasm and abject terror. “Peggy Carter? A-agent Peggy Carter? Oh my God! Forget ‘where am I?’  _When am I?_ ”

The pair sat, in shocked silence, staring at each other. Peggy recovered first. “How do you know my name?” She demanded quietly, but with authority.

“You, you’re a legend. You founded… well… I’m not sure I’m allowed to say that. What year is it? If you’re this young, it most certainly isn’t 2015. Although  _he_  is this… never mind. Can’t say that. I  _know_  I can’t say that.” She paused for a moment before her face lit up again. “Howard Stark has to be alive still! Oh, Fitz would be so jealous! I mean, he’s worked with Tony’s tech before, but Howard Stark is as much his idol as you are mine!”

Peggy furrowed her brow, trying to make sense of the absolute nonsense the girl was spewing. “Alright. This makes absolutely no sense…”

“Oh, but it does! Don’t you see? That  _thing_ ” her face turned sour, “pulled me out of 2015 and dropped me here in…”

“1947,” Peggy supplied. “Are you saying that artifact is a time machine?”

“Yes and no… it’s not a  _machine_ , or it wasn’t as far as we could figure. It’s organic, but not Terran in origin. Fitz said there was an electrical charge coming off it, but it had a strange magnetic field that kept the charge from affecting anything around it. Then the inhumans were trying to get to it, so that could mean any score of things… but it did send me back sixty-eight years, my  _parents_  aren’t even alive yet, so yes, sort of a time machine.” She gave a short laugh and under her breath mumbled something that sounded like ‘ _wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey-stuff indeed.’_

Peggy tried to take from that what she could.  _Organic, alien, electro-magnetic time-machine._  Perhaps the SSR would give it to Howard; there was certainly no one here who could work with it.

After three hours of listening to the girl, Jemma, ramble on about mostly things that she didn’t understand, Peggy finally exited the room. “I don’t understand most of the science,” Peggy told Chief Thompson, who stood against the door to the observation room hand running through is hair in frustration.

“Who would?”

“Howard, possibly, but it seems like a lot of this is too advanced for Jemma and her colleagues and that’s with the technological advances they seem to have, that we don’t.”

“Do we really think she’s from the future? And what’s with her knowing you?”

“I don’t know, honestly. We suspected that this artifact was alien and who knows what alien artifacts are capable of… so Jemma being from the future? Not out of the question. Her knowing me… and Howard… that worries me, especially because she’s refusing to say anything else about it. Everyone knows Howard, but the only people who know my name are our enemies. My instinct says she’s alright, and it hasn’t steered me wrong before… I just don’t know.”

“Until we have a better idea, I want her under watch. I had Sousa set up a room for her that’s secured and she’ll stay there until we figure out what to do. Call Stark, see if he can come in and look at this thing. Until further notice, you work on her and you’re Stark’s liaison, no one else can handle him.”

That night, she called Howard, who, conveniently, had been getting on his plane to visit New York before his next trip to the icecap to look for Steve’s remains. Peggy went to bed early, eager to catch up on the sleep she had lost the night before and to avoid Angie for just a little bit longer after their argument over lunch. She woke at 4AM to a pounding on her bedroom door and Howard’s voice telling her to wake up. They left to go to the office early, Howard was eager to get to work on the artifact and Peggy needed to organize her thoughts before she spoke to Jemma again.

On the way, Howard told Peggy about his idea for the  _Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division_. “Awfully long name.” Peggy commented.

“I just really wanted the initials to spell SHIELD.”


	2. Saturday, May 17, 1947

#  _Saturday, May 17, 1947_

“What can you tell me, Jemma?” Peggy asked, fingers massaging her temples to stave off the headache forming there.

Jemma shrugged and looked down at her clasped hands. They were at an impasse. Peggy had told Jemma they needed her to prove that she was from the future. But she couldn’t, or so she said. “If there’s one thing I know from all of the science fiction I’ve watched in my life, it’s that if I give too much information, it could change people’s futures and next thing you know, we’re in a temporal loop replaying the same week over and over and over again.” Peggy needed her to talk; Jemma needed to stay silent.

Jemma shifted under Peggy’s stern gaze, seemingly uncomfortable either from the tense silence or the unfamiliar clothes she had been given to wear, perhaps, likely, both. “Please, can’t I see the artifact? Maybe it will send me back. Please, I already missed my date with Fitz; I don’t want to lose him forever.”

Peggy was silent a moment. She could relate to Jemma’s missed date with Leo Fitz. “Alright, we’ll try. But if it doesn’t work, you will give me something to work with.”

“Alright.” Jemma said in resignation. “If it doesn’t work, what else have I to lose? I can’t stay in this room for the next sixty-five years.”

Jemma and Peggy’s visit to the artifact did not go as planned. It had been in the strange gelatinous-liquid state when they entered and Jemma unlocked the glass case and reached in… only for it to turn itself back to solid stone. She pulled her hand away, and it was back to liquid, then to stone again when she tried to touch it. “It’s _taunting_ me.” She realized. “Peggy, it’s sentient and it’s taunting me! It’s going to leave me here.” She turned back to the artifact. “Let me go home!” She yelled. “Put me back where I belong!” She stomped her foot. The artifact, gelatinous again for the moment, spat out a small item which skidded to a halt inches from Peggy’s feet.

It was an ID card. She picked it up to examine it. On the back, among other information, was the date of birth Jemma had claimed as her own when she was questioned on Tuesday. The picture on the front showed Jemma, her name and title of Bio-Chemist. The issue date on the card said 2013FEB05. Above Jemma’s photo was the emblem of an eagle, which Peggy would have disregarded except for the bold letters S.H.I.E.L.D. that were laid out to the right. SHIELD, Howard’s idea for a new, better organized, more powerful SSR next to a symbol that bore little resemblance to the SSR’s symbol, but could easily be derived from it.

Jemma had said on multiple occasions what an honor it was to meet her. That first meeting she’d talked about how Leo Fitz would have wanted to meet Howard. She’d mentioned that they worked together. Jemma was from the future. She was an agent of SHIELD.

A more cautious part of Peggy’s brain pointed out that this was too much of a coincidence, the artifact releasing this ID just when a tight lipped Jemma needed to start providing answers. Peggy slipped the ID in her pocket and pulled the crying, screaming Jemma out of the room, leading her down the silent halls back to her room, with only the ever-present guards for company.

“I have an errand to run.” Peggy claimed a few minutes later, handing a hiccupping Jemma a cup of tea. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

It took two hours to get in contact with Howard, who was surveying another section of ice for clues to Steve’s crash site. “Howard,” she said over the radio, “who knows about your plans for the Strategic Homeland … thing?”

“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. SHIELD.” He corrected, sounding a tad bit annoyed. “Not many. You, the Howlers, Jarvis… I was talking to that senator last month, you know, the one who keeps saying the SSR is corrupt, and well, he _is_ right, he knows I have something in the works. Although I’m not sure how much he’d support it if he knew I was planning on bring you in as director because he just hates women in…”

“Does everyone know the name of it, Howard?” She cut him off, exasperated. He would go on for days if not.

“Nope!” He said, sounding very pleased with himself. “Just you and me. Figured you should give the greenlight on the name if you were running it.”

So, Jemma was from the future and Howard Stark was experimenting on a time machine. Jemma’s warnings of time loops and the future burning to the ground suddenly sounded much more reasonable. Imagine Howard Stark running around in the future, or worse, the past.

Peggy had elected not to give Howard the information that his most recent project had spit out a girl claiming to be from the future. Something told her that it was time to lock that object in a dark closet somewhere, far away from Howard’s hands.

“Why?” Howard asked, “what’s this about?”

“Nothing,” Peggy lied. “I just don’t want this to get around to my co-workers and for me to be out of a job before we’re set up.”

“Ah, so you’re accepting my proposal!” Howard said.

“Yes. And I have friend in bio-chemistry I’d like to bring in when you’re next in town.” It was time to get Jemma Simmons acclimated to the 1940’s. It seemed like she would be there for a while.

“I’m not going to get to go back home, am I?” Jemma asked without preamble when Peggy came back.

“No, I don’t think you will. So, let’s talk about the future, shall we _Agent Simmons_?” Jemma’s head shot up at the mention of her last name, which she had never given. Peggy handed her the ID badge. “The artifact spat it out while you were raging at it.”

“Yes, I’m an agent of SHIELD… or was and am again? It’s hard to explain.  Sufficive to say, people love conflict, so the world is never at peace for long. Wars break out figureheads fall, organizations with them, then new leaders rebuild.”

“I understand that there are things I can’t know, Jemma, but you’ll need to make a life here now, and that will be difficult if you have an entire life, memories, friends, stories in your past that you never share with anyone. So, you are going to come home with me and my roommate Angie. You are going to pretend that you are a friend of mine from England. And I would like for you to help build SHIELD’s scientific research department.”

“I don’t know if I could do that. I know of things that will happen when certain people come in, and I’d want to avoid the damage they cause, but they need to because very important things, often good things, come out of it in the long run.” Jemma said.

“Then come in as a silent partner. You can do your own research, experiment. Help Howard, he’s dying to meet you since I told him I had a friend in bio-chemistry, not really is forte. If you eventually decide to take a more active role, you can decide where and when.”

“I’ll have to change my name, but it would be nice to still have science, since I’ve lost almost everything else.” Jemma thought back to her history classes at SHIELD Academy, laughing when she realized that she had studied herself. “Agent Jemma Leopold. Fitz and I always thought it was funny that we happened to have the same names as one of the original members of SHIELD, especially since she was science. We always joked that she must have been a vampire since she never appeared in a single photograph.” She sobered again. “What are the chances I’ll live to see the thirteenth of May 2015? I’ll be ninety-five, if I’m even still alive. I’m not going to get to see Fitz again and I never fixed things.”

“Well Agent Leopold, I can say with certainty that I understand your loss-”

“More than you know.”

She quirked an eyebrow at Jemma, who didn’t seem inclined to elaborate.

“But I believe it’s time to go out into the real world and start anew here and now.”

“No time like the present.”

Two suitcases bought from a pawnbroker, three hours sorting through second-hand shops for clothes, a quick stop at Wanamaker’s for underthings and other necessities, and a half hour forging identification documents in the bowels of the SSR building and Jemma Simmons had finally become Jemma Leopold, and just in time for dinner.

“You’re trying to outnumber me,” Angie said after Peggy had introduced her old school friend and informed Angie that Jemma would be taking up residence in one of the extra rooms. “I’m still calling you English… I’ll just need to come up with another name for you,” she vowed good-naturedly, indicating Jemma.

Jemma proved to fit seamlessly into the fabric of Peggy and Angie’s lives. Peggy told Angie that Jemma had come over from England to help with the venture Howard was starting in several months. It was easily decided (over Jemma’s objections) that the stipend Howard insisted the girls take (in addition to their already free and bill-less housing) should go to Jemma to improve her wardrobe and provide for any other expenses she had until such a time that her employment began.

Jemma spent most of her days exploring New York, trying to get a handle on life in the 1940s. She visited Brooklyn where she knew Captain America and the Winter Solider had both grown up. She spent her mornings wandering Central Park and reading books from Howard Stark’s library on the private roof terrace of the girls’ apartment building. Afternoons were spent in the theatre district, occasionally going to shows, but more often helping Angie sew up holes in costume seams before the evening performance. Evenings were for the museums. Jemma dreaded the nights. She would hear Peggy cry out in her sleep, tossing and turning before getting up in the early hours. She knew that Steve Rogers was alive, but she couldn’t tell. With a guilty conscience, she would try to fall back asleep, but she rarely prevailed.

In no time at all, a month had passed.


	3. Sunday June 29, 1947 and Monday June 29, 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm assuming that Avengers: Age of Ultron occurred at roughly the same time the movie came out. Also, totally not okay with JARVIS being gone, so Tony was able to reinstall a backup of JARVIS circa Avengers (1) and Vision still gets to run around. 
> 
> Also, last scene tonight of Fitz is 100% what I pictured Jemma doing in my last chapter. So, this chapter is dedicated to Iain DeCaestecker because he is legitimately the best actor on M:AOS and I always forget. Then he has an emotional scene and BAM! I'm dead again.

Sunday June 29, 1947

Peggy opted to add sugar to her tea, _just this once_ , to prepare herself for what was sure to be an impossible week. Night by night, it had been getting harder to sleep. _Hopefully_ , Peggy thought, _I’ll be able to sleep come next weekend_. She had taken off Thursday through the following Monday, but she knew sleep would not be forthcoming until it passed.

Steve’s birthday was on Friday.

He would have been twenty-nine.

Jemma came into the kitchen, a bright, obviously forced, smile on her face. “Good morning Peggy! How did you sleep?”

“ _Swell_ , as the Captain would say. Thank you Jemma.” She took her tea and started towards the sitting room, hoping beyond hope that she could avoid the interrogation Jemma would inevitably spring on her about her sleeping patterns.

Peggy sat in her favorite chair, one she had made Howard buy new because _I don’t trust that you haven’t been naked on every surface of this house_. Hearing footsteps, she instinctively looked up. That was a mistake.

Jemma stood over her with a scowl and her arms folded. “Peggy. This is not healthy. You haven’t been sleeping or eating. You barely have spoken to Angie or I for the past week-”

“Jemma, I see you every morning!”

“And respond in nothing but monosyllables! You are pulling away from us and you won’t tell us why! We want to help you.”

“You can’t help me Jemma. This is just a hard time of year. Give me the week; things will get better.”

Jemma sat, obviously thinking over Peggy’s words before realization dawned on her face. “Steve Rogers’ birthday is Friday.”

“Yes. He would have been twenty-nine.”

Jemma looked uncomfortable and refused to meet Peggy’s eyes. “What are you hiding from me? Jemma?”

“I can’t tell you. I wish I could, Peggy, I really do. But it’s a future thing.”

“What does Steve’s birthday have to do with the future? He’s dead.” Jemma lifted her hand as if to push her hair behind her ear, her usual tell. “Steve is dead, isn’t he? Jemma?”

Jemma shook her head.

Peggy’s tea cup shattered when it hit the floor.

* * *

 

Monday, June 29, 2015

“Cap! You’ve got mail!” Tony yelled from the doorway. Steve turned off the display on the tablet to retrieve the letter. “Who are you even getting mail from?” Tony’s voice trailed after him as he walked further down the hall. “Like everyone you know lives here!”

Steve couldn’t help the smile and picked up the letter, making himself comfortable on the couch again.

The envelope he held was old and yellowed. _Captain Steven Rogers, Avengers Tower, New York City_ was scrawled on the front. _That's not a full address and there's no stamp. The post office didn't deliver this._  The handwriting was vaguely familiar, but Steve couldn’t place it.

“JARVIS?” Steve called to the newly reintegrated AI, “How was this delivered?”

“It was dropped off by an older gentleman to the security desk in the lobby, Captain. It has passed all security checks," came the crisp reply.

“Hmm…” Steve turned the envelope over in his hands a few times, looking for more clues. _Why do I know this writing? The paper looks old… the quality reminds me of home, but Avengers Tower most certainly didn’t exist in the 40s._

With only limited clues, Steve decided that his best chance of figuring out who sent him the mail was to open the envelope and look.

Upon removing the letter and folding it open, it took less than a second for the smell of old paper and the faint, faded scent of jasmine and rose to hit him… The scent, the writing came suddenly into sharp focus. _Peggy_.

_My Darling,_

_You’re alive! I’ve so many emotions vying for prominence that I have no idea which I should feel most. Relief I feel in spades. I cannot describe the imaginings forced upon me during the nights- watching you drown or freeze or bleed or stave, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. My dreams are endless and countless. But now I’m told that you are frozen in the ice, in a stasis. I think that perhaps my dreams will limit themselves now to show you frozen but at least the other terrors can away and when I wake I will know that your pain won’t be permanent. Small mercies._

_I am angry, seething even. At Red Skull for being a psychopath and starting this in the first place. At Colonel Phillips and the Howlers for letting you go through with that foolish plan. At you for not giving me your goddamn co-ordinates, for missing our date, for believing in me and supporting me then leaving me to fend on my own. I’m angry at myself for not being with you on that plane, for not kissing you more often, for spending so much time hiding our relationship, for feeling anything other than absolute joy and pride when I heard that you were alive and saving the world. But more than any other, I’m angry at fate because I have to survive another six or so decades to have the chance to see you and I will be old and decrepit and you will be young, virile, and I’m sure, on the arm of another. And I could never deny you that happiness._

_I am proud of you. I have been since you brought that flagpole down, outwitting all those dimwits and proving that brains beat brawn in the end. I was proud of your bravery when you were screaming in pain but told Erskine and Howard to complete the procedure. Now I hear that you are a leader on a team with an alien, assassins, and a Stark. I hear that you are a mentor and a friend. That you do all this in a world so unlike our own and that you are adapting to it. I am so proud of what you endured and the man you continue to be through it all._

_I’m green with jealousy that some other people in some other time have you while I go without._

_I am amused that you should spend so long frozen to wake up to a world with yet another eccentric-mad scientist Stark for a companion._

_As I write, I find that sadness has begun to permeate my bones. It’s deep and I think it will be the companion of my future life. Oh my darling, I miss you! Knowing that I may never see your handsome face again… my despair has been replaced by relief, but it is just as hopeless and cuts as deeply._

_Finally, most importantly, I love you. I know I could never love another as well, as truly, as fully as I love you. Nor, I think, could any love me as well as you did. You will forever be the greatest love of my life. Our story was tragic, incomplete, ended in the opening chapter. But perhaps the privilege of a tragic love is better than the countless masses that will live their lives forever ignorant of a love like ours._

_I think I must close here, but I will write again, tomorrow I think. I have so much to explain and tell you, but for now I still need to process all I’ve learned. I love you, I miss you, and one day this letter (and many after it) will find a way into your hands._

_Forever yours,_

_Your Best Girl_

How Peggy knew he was alive, how she managed to get this letter to him, it was all a mystery to Steve. There was one thing, however, that he knew without a doubt. This was written by Peggy. Somehow she knew and it took a weight off of him that he never realized he was shouldering.

Although he knew his response would never make it back to her, he went back to his room and retrieved a blank sketchbook, determined to reply to this and any other letter that made it to him.

_Dear Peg,_

_I love you too. I miss you more than I can say. You were the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I’m sorry I missed our date._

_Love, Steve_


End file.
